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0000017a-3b40-d913-abfe-bf44a4f90000Howard Wilkinson joined the WVXU news team as the politics reporter and columnist in April 2012 , after 30 years of covering local, state and national politics for The Cincinnati Enquirer. On this page, you will find his weekly column, Politically Speaking; the Monday morning political chats with News Director Maryanne Zeleznik and other news coverage by Wilkinson. A native of Dayton, Ohio, Wilkinson has covered every Ohio gubernatorial race since 1974, as well as 16 presidential nominating conventions. Along with politics, Wilkinson also covered the 2001 Cincinnati race riots, the Lucasville prison riot in 1993, the Air Canada plane crash at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in 1983, and the 1997 Ohio River flooding. And, given his passion for baseball, you might even find some stories about the Cincinnati Reds here from time to time.

OK, Kentucky GOP. Matt Bevin's Your Candidate. Deal With It.

Here’s something we never expected to say a year ago, after Louisville businessman Matt Bevin - then the ultimate political party outsider - lost a tea party-fueled challenge to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky’s GOP Senate primary:

Matt Bevin is now the Kentucky Republican Party’s candidate for governor in the November election.

Whether the party establishment likes it or not.

The votes of 83 Kentucky Republicans say so.

That’s how many more votes Bevin ended up with than Agriculture Commissioner James Comer in a four-way primary on May 19. And it was the number of votes he won by after they re-canvassed the votes in all of Kentucky’s 120 counties last week.

In the fall, Matt Bevin will face Attorney General Jack Conway, who easily won the Democratic gubernatorial primary.

And if the party establishment doesn’t like it, they can lump it.

Bevin, though, had better hope they end up liking it.

It was an ugly, nasty, bruising primary fight – mostly because of the allegations by a college girlfriend of Comer who accused him of abuse and driving her to an abortion clinic back in the day.

It was an allegation Comer vehemently denied. And he accused candidate Hal Heiner, a Louisville businessman who came in third, of spreading the story – which Heiner denied, although he wasn’t above using the allegation in the campaign.

While the two of them, Comer and Heiner, spit venom at each other, Bevin quietly minded his own business and kept the mud from splattering over him.

Hence, his 83 vote win. Eighty-three votes out of over 214,000 cast.

Comer could have asked for an official recount Friday – one he would have to pay for – but instead conceded the election to Bevin and pledged to “do everything I can to see that he wins in November.”

And McConnell, who was hounded by Bevin and his tea party supporters last spring, endorsed Bevin Friday morning. 

It’s hard to picture McConnell going far out of his way to help Bevin get elected, especially given the fact that, after last May’s Senate primary, Bevin refused to endorse McConnell in his race against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes.

Wouldn’t lift a finger to help poor old Mitch. Who, as it turned out, didn’t need a lot of help defeating Grimes.

And the fact that Bevin dissed McConnell last year is what has a whole lot of people in the Kentucky Republican Party establishment bent out of shape. They’re not particularly happy about running with Bevin at the top of their ticket.

“It depends on how Bevin comes out of the gate,’’ said Campbell County Judge Executive Steve Pendery, a Republican. “He can win them back if he can convince people that he’s a more mainstream person. He has to be aggressive spreading that message, but in the nicest possible way.”

Greg Schumate, chairman of the Kenton County Republican Party, said there is no question about it – there are a lot of rank-and-file, mainstream Republicans “very angry about Bevin not supporting Mitch McConnell last fall.”

“If it weren’t for the failure to endorse McConnell, it wouldn’t be that difficult for the party to come together,’’ Schumate said. “If I were Matt, I’d just say, ‘Look, I was a first time candidate; I was very bitter at how I was treated during that campaign; and I made a mistake. I’ve learned my lesson.’”

Bevin, Schumate said, “can fix this, but he’s got to get his story straight.”

Paul Whalen, the Campbell County Democratic Party chairman, said the divisions in the Kentucky GOP bode well for Democrats in the statewide races this fall.

“I just don’t see any energy on their side,’’ Whalen said. “I don’t see Mitch McConnell doing much to help him. And Rand Paul is busy running for president.”

Paul, Kentucky’s junior senator who is now seeking the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, could provide Bevin with a good lesson in how to handle a divided party after a brutal primary, Schumate said.

Five years ago, Paul, a political newcomer, beat the Republican Party establishment’s candidate, Trey Grayson, in the a very heated primary election. Paul went on to defeat Conway – now the Democrats’ candidate for governor – in the November 2010 election.

“This situation is very much like Trey Grayson and Rand Paul,’’ Schumate said. “After that primary, the party came together – the tea party folks, the establishment folks, everybody. But only because Rand Paul worked very hard at it. He made peace.”

Bevin could learn something from Paul and put out this small fire before it starts burning out of control.

If he doesn’t, he may find out this fall that the road to the Kentucky Statehouse in Frankfort is a very bumpy one.

Howard Wilkinson is in his 50th year of covering politics on the local, state and national levels.